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To his credit, Serbia’s President Vucic is acknowledging the
“Serbian world” concept as his own. Serbia’s borders are inviolable
he says, and “we don’t care about other people’s borders.”
Vucic wants Serbs to be united in a single political space and
state, without violence. Fat chance. Serbia has eight immediate
neighbors. All have Serb minorities, though Bulgaria’s is small. Six
are NATO members (Croatia, Bulgaria, Hungary, Macedonia, Montenegro,
and Romania). Two others host EU and NATO troops committed to their
territorial integrity (Bosnia and Kosovo). What happened when Serbia
tried in the 1990s to extend its political space and unite some of
those minorities in one state? War with Slovenia, war with Croatia,
war with Bosnia, war with Kosovo, and war with NATO. The result:
Serbs fled to Serbia from neighboring countries, but not a square
inch of the neighboring countries was ceded to Serbia.
The German analogy, of which Vucic is fond, is nonsense. Germany was
not re-united by absorbing the territory of a neighboring state.
East Germany was not part of another state. It was part of Germany
occupied by the Soviet Union, which was unable to maintain its
autocratic control. Reunification did nothing to violate the
sovereignty and territorial integrity of Germany’s neighbors.
Everyone in Belgrade forgets to mention Austria, which lives happily
as a separate, German-speaking state, despite Hitler’s ambitions.
Not to mention German minorities in several other European states.
Vucic’s avowal that not a single shot will be fired in his effort to
unite Serbs in a single state is as hollow as the German analogy. If
he believed it, he wouldn’t be re-arming Serbia with Russian and
Chinese weapons. Serbia faces no military threat from its eight
neighbors. He is figuring that if Serbia gets strong enough and
creates enough brouhaha, its neighbors will cede territory rather
than risk a fight. There is no reason to think that will happen, or
that Serbia will not resort to arms if it thinks, like Milosevic,
that it can win.
One of the requirements of EU membership is good neighborly
relations. Not caring about other states’ borders is the epitome of
bad relations with neighbors. Vucic is ready to give up on retaking
all of Kosovo and all of Bosnia. All he wants are the Serb slices,
15% or so and 49% respectively. He would be happy for a slice of
Croatia as well. Eastern Slavonia? He wants all of Montenegro. It is
high time Brussels told him the EU will no longer pretend that
membership is a possibility for a country harboring territorial
ambitions and disrespect for its neighbors’ borders. And it is time
for Washington to signal clearly that NATO will defend all of
Serbia’s neighbors from Belgrade’s unneighborly intentions.
It is time for the EU and NATO to get real with Serbia. |
